Mark Horn/Getty Images I stagger from my bedroom at the usual hour, careful to catch the door with my foot so it won’t bang, and head for the coffee pot. The windows are still dark.
Although I’m positive I’ve filled Mr. Coffee without a sound, my mother appears at the kitchen doorway before I’ve measured out even one scoop of Folgers. I turn toward the susurration of her coat.
“What’s on the agenda for today?” she asks brightly.
She has gotten so tiny that my father, who died 26 years ago, could have swept her up in one arm. She’s wearing the purple down coat that’s too big for her, my late sister’s jacket. Beneath the coat, she is wearing the same sweater and pants she’s worn for the last few days, and maybe slept in, too. Her fluffy white hair sticks out from the edges of her fuzzy pink hat. In her hands, she clutches her pink gloves, pink muffler, two books, a glass of water and her purse. She is ready to go.
“Ma,” I croak, partly in greeting, partly in horror. I pull my bathrobe tighter. I feel like maybe I’m going to lose my mind if I hear “What’s the agenda?” one more time.
Like so many of my friends, I recently brought my mother home to live with my family. At 92, Mom still laughs readily, especially at herself; still dances a few steps whenever she hears jazz; still loves literature, though she’s more likely to read Sue Grafton than James Joyce these days.
She just can’t remember anything.
We extracted Mom from her home of 40 years only by urgent persuasion and promises of eventual return. The place was a wreck, littered with crumpled tissues, filthy linens, mouse droppings and piles of junk-mail solicitations that confounded her. I do not think she will ever go back. And after four months of living together, I do not know if I can manage to stay. Mom runs like an Eveready battery. She is never still.
“What can I do to help you?” she asks, poised in the doorway like a coiled pink bedspring.
“Oh. Uh,” I groan, trying to mask my annoyance. “I don’t know yet, Mom. Just sit.”
Obediently, she sits, depositing hat, gloves, books, water and purse on the breakfast table, shrugging off her coat with a soft grunt of pain. “I didn’t want you to go without me,” she says. With her three good fingers, she unwraps Hershey’s Kisses — left on the table by my son the night before — and pops one into her mouth.
“Ma, don’t eat candy before breakfast,” I say automatically. “I would never leave without you.”
I’m not sure if I’m lying. A week ago, when I rather brutally informed her that she had not showered in six days, Mom got really mad at me, jumped in her car without a word and drove off. Since she can’t remember where she is going, she only went down the driveway and parked. She came back 45 minutes later in a much improved mood.
When, I wonder, do I get to run away?
“What’s on the agenda for today?” Mom asks.
I grit my teeth. “We take Taylor to school at 8. Come home. I do some work on the computer. We pick Taylor up at 10:30 and drive him to the other school.” My youngest son, a high school senior who attends programs at two different schools, recently wrapped his car around a tree. I have promised myself this is the last year I will play Mrs. Chauffeur & Cook. Let’s talk about my agenda. Let’s talk about my future. The boy goes to college, Mom goes to assisted living, and I get to do something fun.
At the table, Mom is looking at the book she’s been reading for the past week, entitled “Denial.” I decide to start over on a more pleasant note.
“What’s that book about, Mom?”
“Well, it’s very good,” she says. She turns to a dog-eared page near the back. “I’m almost finished with it.”
“Yeah, but what’s it about?”
Instead of telling me the plot, Mom, who is a retired English teacher, reads aloud a blurb about the author.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as an awful suspicion pushes rudely into my consciousness. “Yeah, but Mom,” I insist anxiously, “who’s the main character? What’s the story about?”
“You know,” she says complacently, “it’s one of those mysteries. It’s very good.” Mom reads to me the year the book was published. I turn away, feeling heartsick.
“Now, are you going somewhere this morning?” Mom asks.
“At 8, I’m taking Taylor to school.”
Mom cringes dramatically, sticks her tongue out of the side of her mouth and says, “Well, uh, do you think it’s O.K. if I tag along in the back seat?”
“Of course you’re coming, Mom. You always come with us.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. She can tell I am irritated, but it’s only that I hate it when she acts so self-effacing. She looks out the window at the day that has finally brightened and says something unexpected. “It’s just, I feel like my life is like that.” She waves her hand toward the forest outside the window.
The trees, whipped bare by passing winds, crowd without grace down the hill to a thick darkness. Beyond their crisscrossed branches, the winter sky is blue, bold, slashed with a single riff of cloud. “Beautiful,” she says, “and completely still.”
I try to imagine a life that is composed of still gray trees and bright blue sky, leafless, cold and unchanging. For the first time, I feel like I understand what dementia really means. For her there is no future. There is no past. There is only the endless now. I thought I could take care of her, that we could live together and she could do her thing and I could do my thing. I did not understand the profound loss, the way meaning drains out of every familiar thing, the dreadful hunger of someone who can hold nothing but the present moment.
I put my arms around my mother and kiss the top of her head, her chicken-fluff hair tickling my cheek. Assisted living someday, I think, but not today. “Come on,” I say, “we’ve got to get Taylor out the door by 8, and I could really use your help to set the table.”
“Well, let’s get to it,” she says, hoisting herself to her feet and shuffling off to the silver.
